Rotary Year in Review 2007-2008
By David Zimmerman
        
One of my missions today is to make up for past sins. Among my numerous character flaws is that I am terrible at adequately thanking people who should be thanked. I hope to make up for some of that today. Another thing I have failed miserably at this year is letting all of you know the great things this club accomplishes. So my other mission today is to brag about ourselves. And believe me, there is a lot to be proud of.
 
I want to start my thank you's with your officers and board of directors. They have endured my planning sessions, my board meetings, and have done a wonderful job at guiding this club over the last year.
 
George Rohe has been your treasurer, and has been the man who has made sure we are finishing this year with more money than we began. Leland Park has been your secretary. Now in most Rotary clubs, the secretary is the workhorse, making sure all the Rotary International requirements are met, and basically running the club. However, because of the wonderful job done by Sandy, the secretary of this club typically does next to nothing - so Leland was the perfect choice. I'm just kidding, because little did Leland know that I had a plan for him. I gave him the task of establishing, for the first time, a set of standing rules for the club. You see, over the years, our club has made many decisions about how we like to see things run. The only problem is that those decisions get buried in the past minutes of board meetings. Leland dusted off those minutes, and combined those operational decisions into a set of standing rules that will help future boards make good decisions, and in many cases, not re-decide things that have already been decided. Another administrative thing we accomplished this year, with the help of each of our committee chairs, was to create comprehensive descriptions of each club committee. These descriptions and timelines are designed to help future committee chairs understand their responsibilities.
 
A very important member of our board I would like to personally thank is past president Luther Moore. He has been invaluable to me as I have navigated this year - so thank you Luther. Your other board members this year were Al Allison, Carol Jordan, Brenda Lea, Thomas Moore and Hunter Widener, all of whom have now finished their two-year stint on the board. This year's members continuing into next year are Neil Burkhead, Elsie Garner, Carol Hughes, Frank Martin, Pat Millen, Chip Scholz, Lamar Thomas, and Martin Waters. Thanks to all of you for a great job. And while not a board member, I also want recognize Tom Robertson, who served as our Assistant District Governor this year. Tom has done a great job in that role. And speaking of the district, I want to thank Sandy Osborne, John Snyder, and Bob Elliott for all being involved in district leadership roles this year.
 
You know, we walk in here each Tuesday, and everything is as it should be. Everything goes according to schedule, and an hour later, we all head back to work, or back home. So my next mission is to thank those members who make it all seem so easy. These members and committees all come under the leadership of Club Service Avenue chair Ken Poe. The first group of members I want to thank are the folks who get here early, and stay late. And no, I'm not talking about "The Table." I'm talking about the greeters, led by Steve Montgomery, the computer check-in crew, led by Kemp Dunaway, the audio-visual committee, led by Bob Brietz, the Sergeant at arms committee, which gets everything set up and checks in our guests, led by Jesse Hite, and our photographer with the accent, Bert Voswinkel.
 
Then there's the people who put the meeting together each week. Top on that list is Chuck Lew, who chaired the program committee this year. My mandate to Chuck was to bring us business speakers, and that's just what he did with the help of four outstanding quarter chairs, Katie Tyler, Worth Williamson, Jim Woodward, and Ron Kimble. I think we will all agree that our speakers this year were outstanding.
 
Russell Ranson organizes the head table each week, Tom Robertson makes sure someone's always here to give the invocation, Chris Thomas and his committee make sure our guests are introduced, and Bryan Adams and his committee lead us through the glory and agony of Health & Happiness. And as far as I'm concerned, Meg McElwain and Gregg Walker did a terrific job of leading the club's music this year. There's also BG Metzler, who organized our one "How I Got Where I'm At." Sorry again BG, that we only had one. Once the meeting is over each week, Henry Bostic and his committee does a yeoman's job of organizing the write-up for the bulletin. This is a major job which was shared this year by Matt Joyner, Jerri Haigler, Suzanne Bledsoe, Jill Santuccio, George MacBain, Sheila Cottringer, Marilynn Bowler, Jim Kelley, Sandy Osborne and John Galles.
 
Who else makes this club run? Joey Godbold's attendance committee makes sure we're all coming to the meetings, David Anderson's Long Range Planning Committee helps us focus on the future, Alan Adler and his Public Relations committee makes sure the world knows the good stuff we're up to, father and son Loftin put together the club roster, which I have know idea what I would do without.
 
Membership is so critical to every Rotary Club. It's an especially important task for a club our size - we are, as you may remember, among the top 50 largest clubs in the world. Each year, the district asks the club to set a goal for membership. Not knowing any better, I told them we would add eight members this year. I figured that's a reasonable number for a club with over 300 members. What I later learned is that our club, like most other Rotary Clubs, will lose about 10% of its members each year. So that means in order for us to increase membership by eight members, we would need to bring in about 38 new members. This is a challenge that Tom Bartholomy and his membership committee readily took on, and did a great job. I am happy to report that the Rotary Club of Charlotte grew by nine members this year to reach a total of 320 members. I'd especially like to thank Tony Zeiss for bringing in four new members, and Tim Newman and Alan Adler for each bringing in three members. And once Tom has brought those new members in, Catherine Browning does a fabulous job providing our new members with the orientation they need to become good Rotarians.
 
I want to give special recognition to Chip Scholz, who readily volunteered to lead my brainchild, the new Fellowship Committee. My charge to Chip was to help us get to know each other a little better, and he jumped right in with some wonderful additions to our Rotary year. He and his committee organized 16 dinners hosted by members, put together a trip to the zoo in Asheville for member families, as well a couples golf trip to Pinehurst. Over 80 members took advantage of these new opportunities to get to know each other.
 
This club does a tremendous amount of good work. Some of that work is done through our Community Service Avenue, headed by John Snyder. You know, there are lots of things this club does each year that no one hears about. We just approved buying 11 sets of flags for the courtrooms in the new courthouse. We gave $2,000 to support the district campaign for Alzheimers, donated $1,000 to the Performance Learning Center, and made a $1,000 donation to the Powell Majors Scholarship Fund at CPCC. I'd like to thank Chris Kemper for heading up two committees this year. The first was the clothing drive for Crisis Assistance Ministry. He and his ten committee members collected seven car loads of clothes over six weeks. Jim Adams also deserves a lot of credit for getting this effort started a few years back. The second effort Chris headed was our Habitat for Humanity house. As you may remember, we decided this year to not support this Charlotte-wide Rotary project with money, only volunteers and in-kind contributions. We had dozens of members participate, putting in many hours, and the in-kind donations of members was substantial.
 
Chase Saunders headed our environmental committee this year. They decided to dedicate their allocation of funds to the Greenway Clock Project that continues to move slowly but surely towards creating a substantial and lasting tribute to the Rotary Club of Charlotte. There have been many members involved in this cooperative effort with the Parks and Recreation department, but I want to especially thank Catherine Browning for bird dogging this project. To date, the club has set aside over $33,000 to fund the clock.
 
I could spend all day talking about Alan Adler and the 88 club members who were part of the Rotary Scholarship Golf Classic. This year's tournament cleared $64,000. This was such a club effort that it's tough to single out members for their contributions, but at the risk of leaving a lot of people out, I do want to recognize task leaders: Cindy Wolf, Sandy Osborne, Mary Ciminelli, Paul Schmidt, Tom Robertson, Ron Campbell, Leigh Derby, and of course the grand poo-bah of golf tournaments, Alan Adler. And of course, what the golf tournament is all about is honoring our public safety professionals by helping them fund their children's college education. John Lassiter's Public Service Scholarship committee granted seven scholarships this year and renewed 26 existing ones. Thanks to our new partnership with the Hood Hargett Breakfast Club, our endowment is becoming quite significant. As you know, the club has two other scholarship programs. This year, the Rotary Scholarship Fund, headed by John Bradberry, gave out $7,000 in scholarships to CPCC students wishing to further their education at UNC-Charlotte. And a few weeks ago, we were all privileged to be introduced to the outstanding high school seniors who together received $13,500 in scholarships. Thanks to Arch McIntosh for heading that committee.
 
What else did we do this year? Well, 78 of us braved the elements to ring the bell on the square for the Salvation Army. We collected $2,400 in change. Thanks to John Stedman for heading that effort. Our Youth Programs Committee, headed by John Snyder, saw an increasingly strong Interact Club have a stellar year, including helping us with the clothes drive and the Habitat house. I'd like to thank Mike Hawley for overseeing our club's Donor Advised Fund. This is a relatively new component of our club started under the direction of Herb Harriss. The fund grew substantially this year. Biff Virkler headed up our Vocational Service Avenue this year. That included our efforts with Classroom Central, headed by Lynn Johnson. We provided volunteers, with eleven members actively participating each month. We also provided $1500 in funding, and about $4000 in school supplies through our drive.
 
Our Excellence in Leadership committee, headed by Phil Van Hoy, presented the 2008 Leadership Award to Allen Tate, Jr. Thanks to Bob Webb's Junior Achievement Exchange City, we provided that program with $1,500 in funding and volunteers.
 
I am especially proud of our International Service Avenue, lead this year by Don Millen, and the major things we are now doing on the international front. Again, we do things no one ever hears about, like supporting Garinger students participating in an exchange program to the Middle East. We helped eight CMS students go to Mexico for 10 days to participate in a program by the Center for International Understanding. We provided funds to help with the education of children in a coastal town in Kenya. And we donated to the Shelby Breakfast Rotary Club's project in Malawi in Africa. We provided $2000 to the District's Stop Hunger Now Campaign. Thanks to Lamar Thomas and the Group Study Exchange committee, the club has a new sweetheart. Isa Tejeda, our exchange student, charmed us all with her wonderful presentation a few weeks back. Our other scholar, selected by Tom Norwood's Ambassadorial Scholarship Committee, is Anna Marshall, a Chapel Hill student. She'll be going to Mexico to study public policy and political science. Regina Patton was a busy young lady this year as chair of the World Community Service committee. She and volunteers from this club put in a major effort to host the Group Study Exchange team from Taiwan, and then organized the outgoing team on the way to Taiwan. A big thanks goes to Sandy Osborne, Matt Joyner, Herb Harriss, Mary Ciminelli, Bob Elliot and Bill Bradley for hosting the Taiwanese in their homes. Regina and her committee were also deeply involved in the container project.
 
Then there's all we're doing to help the desperate people in Alta Cayma. I'll start with the trip to Alta Cayma Peru, which you heard all about earlier this year. Special thanks go to Erskine & Betty Harkey, Luther & Sandra Moore, Will & Elsie Barnhardt, Pender & Kathryn McElroy, and Ed & Page Kizer for making that trip and representing us so well. This was the second trip there - the first last year inspired a great person, and a great Rotarian, Ed Wadsworth, to make a difference. This year, the club donated $2,000 to help finance his monumental effort to collect and ship 70,000 pounds of goods in an 80 foot container to Alta Cayma, Peru. Our partners in this project included Dilworth Rotary, and three Catholic Churches. Many of you contributed items to be shipped - Frank Watson and Will Barnhardt deserve special thanks - it was a great club effort!
 
That trip was, in part, to look into the Peru Water Project, an extensive undertaking to improve the water capacity to the people of Alta Cayma. Thanks to the great work of Frank Martin and his committee, our competitive matching grant for this project was approved this year. This project will be funded by a $6,000 donation from the Rotary Club of Arequipa, a $37,000 donation from our club, a matching $37,000 donation from our Rotary District, and a $59,000 match by The Rotary Foundation, for a total project of $139,000. But, you know, the Rotary Foundation is us. We're the ones who fund it through our individual donations, and I could not be more proud of our Rotary Foundation efforts this year, led by Todd Stevens. We introduced 18 new Paul Harris Fellows to the club, and 29 members moved to their next level. We also added 6 Paul Harris Society recipients and one new benefactor. Most important, and in a large measure due to the Rotary Foundation drive we held in the fall, this club's contribution to the Rotary Foundation hit an all-time high. Over the last 12 months, members of the Rotary Club of Charlotte have contributed $52,515.63 to the Rotary Foundation. That's $8,500 more than last year, and raised our per capita giving to $162. So we came a long way this year, and I think it has a lot to do with the fact we're now seeing firsthand the miraculous things that can be accomplished through the Rotary Foundation.
 
So that was our year. Anyone who has been the president of this club will tell you it's not about leading. It's about getting out of the way and watching a bunch of enthusiastic, caring, giving, and incredibly talented people do amazing things.
    
Head Table: Al Allison, Carol Jordan, Brenda Lea, Mac McCarley, Thomas Moore, Leland Park, David Zimmerman;
Invocation: Tony Marciano;
Visitors & Guests: Tigger Alexander; Music & Piano: Thomas Moore; Photos: Bert Voswinkel

"Round-Trip" - To Mexico And Back - In An Hour
By Marilynn Bowler   (June 17, 2008)
 
Debra Hirsch is a passionate woman. As a reporter for The Charlotte Observer, she is easily described as a wordsmith whose mission is to succinctly report facts and communicate events. This week at Charlotte Rotary we were introduced to the genuine, exceptionally caring person who is Debra Hirsch. Speaking about her six-month journey to Mexico on a Rotary Ambassadorial Cultural Immersion Fellowship, she took us - via photographs - on a brilliant tour throughout the gorgeous cities, towns and villages of that fascinating country.
  
Opening her remarks with a brief history of who she is, Debra spun through a series of photos taken of her from infancy (11 months) in Madison, Wisconsin through her young adult years … each picturing her with her signature dark-framed glasses. A Journalism major, she graduated with a B.A. from Northwestern University and went on to get her masters degree, also in Journalism, from that esteemed school. She advised us that she loves dancing, is Jewish, has one brother and is engaged to "Seth." We were getting to know Debra and we liked her … a lot.
  
She then began talking to us about her intense interest in minorities and, specifically, Latinos. There is a dearth of coverage in the media on news items regarding Latinos and Latino issues, she said, including in The Observer. Did we know, for example, that 14% of the population in the United States is Latino? And, in fact, that number may be higher now since Latinos are the fastest growing group in our country. Indeed, there are 59,000 Latinos in Charlotte … a number which represents 10% of our population. Even given those statistics, there is a certain discrepancy in news coverage in Charlotte when it comes to the Latino population. Perhaps because of an insufficient number of reporters on staff or because of a lack of interest - or maybe even because there are not enough reporters who speak Spanish languages - the number of stories involving Latinos is significantly lower than comparable stories about other ethnicities. Citing last year, Debra shared with us that out of one hundred and five reporters, she was one of only two who spoke Spanish.
  
Following her heart, over the past few years Debra applied for - and was awarded - a Rotary Ambassadorial Fellowship and hence began her journey to Mexico, her stay with the Ayalas family in Cuernavaca, and her six-month immersion into the Mexican tradition and way of life. As a volunteer at the local orphanage and at the local branch of La Jornada newspaper, Debra found invaluable experience and great joy. She loved it!
  
Debra's "photo tour" of Mexico was intriguing. We saw up-close some of the world's most magnificent waterfalls, tiny village schools, incredible gardens, imposing pyramids and temples, dimly lit caves and brightly colored marketplaces, amazing Ruins and breathtaking cathedrals. Through approximately one-hundred stunning photographs we visited a mummy museum and an art complex; we saw the Pyramid of the Moon and we laughed at a shot of a donkey on a beach; we saw cliff divers and murals and a Maypole celebration. Through photos we visited the largest tree in the world and the Festival of Radishes. We learned about the Day of the Dead beginning on November 1st where kids make offerings to deceased relatives and create candy skulls in the shape of dead persons, and we heard about Guadalupe and huge town parties to honor girls as they reach the age of fifteen. Every town has a patron saint and there are churches in every single tiny town in Mexico, she said. And there was more … so much more.
In closing, Debra told us that she now feels she has a connection with anyone who has ever been to Mexico and, also, with those Latinos who so eagerly share their stories with this soft-hearted reporter who so well understands and cares. Charlotte Rotary is proud to have sponsored this excellent Ambassador to Mexico.
   
Head Table: Mike Rash, Al Allison, John Snyder, Don Millen, Jeff Searcy, Jill Santuccio;
Invocation: John Greer;
Visitors & Guests: Chris Thomas; Song: Natalie English; Piano: Thomas Moore; Photos: Bert Voswinkel